Lately I have been thinking about life and all its rich minutiae, the little moments that make everything so acute and achingly real. The long drag of the work day and the sudden lightness of its end. The earthy tang of kale tinting my morning smoothie, made all the more wonderful by the miracle of waking up early enough to make it before 6am. The drowsy pleasure of a 1am phone call. The startling gift of warmth on a January day. The silence of a mid-day meal spent slowly reading poetry. The hum of Adrienne’s words settling inside my chest.

II.

On Friday I climbed the stairs to the fifth floor of the library and gazed out its endless windows, soaked in the sunlit buildings, and marveled at the intimacy of watching strangers enter and exit bearing their armloads of books. How lucky I am to work here, I thought, contemplating the shelves around me. How blessed to benefit from this sanctuary of education and learning.

III.

Last week a woman and her granddaughter entered the store where I work, disappeared down its aisles and returned bearing coupons and a quiet request for colored pencils held behind the desk. I rang up their transaction; the grandmother gathered the pencils and pressed them into her granddaughter’s palms; and as they turned to walk away, I fought the urge to surrender to a sudden burst of tears. Something about their patience, their politeness, their gentleness — the tender shift of colored pencils from very old to very young — struck me as impossibly kind, and my heart swelled with gratitude for having witnessed it.

IV.

Small moments like these — incongruous, unpredictable — have heightened my awareness of this world. For every ragged sob over bruised feet and soul-sucking retail, there is the comfort of a day off and a bath in epsom salts. For every unbearable hour spent longing to hear someone’s voice, there is the release of writing a letter. For the helplessness that overtakes me as I watch Little Rock’s homeless leave the library for the bitter cold each night, there is the ability to hand out canvas totes to replace the duct-taped trash bags they haul behind their backs.

V.

This world is not perfect. It is cruel and unfair and unkind. But even in the darkness, there are moments of improbable light.

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There’s so much I want to say about 2017, but I’m not at all sure how to say it. How to describe such a momentous year? In twelve short months, I moved to a new state, got an apartment, worked four jobs, and came out to my family and the world of social media. I also bought a car, wrote two drafts of a book, and spent the holidays away from home. I cried a lot, laughed a lot, and drank a little wine. It was a good year. And that is such a poor way to describe it.

I guess in the end what I want to say is this: 2017 felt like a gift. A gift of unimaginable proportions, a year both unwieldy and wonderful, brimming with laughter, anxiety, joy, and tears. I grew so much as a person, a writer, a worker, a friend, and that growth is gaining momentum. It’s propelling me onward into something — I don’t know what — and I’m excited. I am eager. I feel ready to face the challenge of this year.

So much of this momentum comes from the media I consumed. I headed into 2017 desperate to change my life circumstance, yes, but also heavy with questions and aching for answers. I wanted to understand 2016, this year that had wrecked me so thoroughly, that had brought me to my highest high and dropped me to my lowest low. I wanted to understand my family’s broken dynamics. I wanted to understand the election. I wanted to understand racism. I wanted to understand homophobia. I entered 2017 with a deep desire to know, not just what was going on in my life, but in the world around it. And so of course I turned to books.

Annie Dillard says it best in Pilgrim at Tinker Creek: “We must somehow take a wider view, look at the whole landscape, really see it, and describe what’s going on here. Then we can at least wail the right question into the swaddling band of darkness, or, if it comes to that, choir the proper praise.”

Below is some art that helped me take a wider view, that drew me gently back and encouraged me to look at the whole landscape, really see it, and describe what’s going on. It’s a list shaped by my preoccupations, driven by my need to understand my country’s flaws, my queer heritage, and my white, Western, Christian one, as well.

As 2018 unfolds, I encourage you to explore these titles. But more than that, I urge you to ask your own questions and seek out your own answers. Or, if there are none, then at least continue to question. Ta-Nehisi Coates once wrote, “I don’t know that I have ever found any satisfactory answers of my own. But every time I ask it, the question is refined. That is the best of what the old heads meant when they spoke of being ‘politically conscious’ — as much a series of actions as a state of being, a constant questioning, questioning as ritual, questioning as exploration rather than the search for certainty.”

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It’s been a while since I last posted, and I want to apologize. I left some threads dangling with the Mother God post, and I’m sorry for that. Life has been … well, to put it vaguely, life has been life, and this hasn’t been a writing season.

Correction: It hasn’t been a blogging season. I am, in fact, writing, but the words are rough and tender, like a scraped elbow transitioning from scab to new skin. My words aren’t ready for the wider world yet, and to be honest, neither am I. (And here is where I retract my earlier apology, because something I am learning is that I do not have to apologize for what I am feeling or experiencing.)

I’m not sure how many of you care to read the sporadic ramblings of a broke twenty-something, and to be honest, I’m trying not to pay attention to how many of you may or may not be out there. If I’ve learned anything over the past three months, it’s that stats don’t matter in the face of genuine human connection. And now we’ve reached the root of my vague rambling: I haven’t posted since September because I haven’t needed to.

I still don’t.

But I do want to, at least a little bit. I want to share — if only for myself — what I’ve read these past few months while coffee cooled and candles burned and a warm cat dozed on my lap. So, without further ado,

The Highlights

or, some books I have been reading that I think you should read, too

Olive Kitteridgeby Elizabeth Strout (novel) — A soft book. Quiet and aching and kind. It picks you up and settles you in a place of warmth and light.

Sister Outsiderby Audre Lorde (essays) — A fierce book. One that is still frighteningly, shamefully relevant. One I think all American adults should challenge themselves to read.

All About Loveby bell hooks (nonfiction) — A freeing book. It will shake you up, rattle your chains, cast your preconceived notions down into the dirt. You won’t escape this book unscathed, but you will walk away with tools for healing and growth that you didn’t know you needed.

We Were Eight Years in Power: An American Tragedy by Ta-Nehisi Coates (memoir / essays) — An essential book. One that, again, I implore every American to read. Particularly white Americans. It will force you to confront uncomfortable questions, such as, what have we done to this country? or worse, what have we done to our fellow human beings?

Worth mentioning

or, books that made me laugh, smile, cry, grin, gasp, or scramble for a pen (but that I’m just not up to talking about)

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Would you believe me if I told you I’ve been trying to write this letter for seven years?

Perhaps I should start at the beginning, when I am a silent slip of a girl too self-conscious to inhabit her skin. Or perhaps I should start an hour after, when I am home, alone in my room, book open, fingers vaguely trembling from the staggering force of your words. But of course to start there, you must know my background, and that’s simply to much to fit into a single letter, and maybe I should set this aside and start to write a book.

I am babbling.

This is the part where I tell you who I am, what book I’m talking about, and why it’s come to mean so much to me, but these are the things that I can’t possibly write.

Do you understand, Annie? Of course you don’t. You are in a cabin with your husband in Virginia. You are painting and writing letters and living your own wild life. You have no idea who I am.

That’s the funny thing about writing, isn’t it? You put these marks down on paper and send them out into the world and suddenly they’re changing the lives of people you’ve never met.

I have read you in bathtubs, in creeks, in rivers, on top of mountains, and in dark dank pits. I have carried you through the streets of Portland, across fallen logs in Colorado, and down empty sidewalks of a college campus when I couldn’t bear to go to church. I have read you in the best of times and the worst of times and all the times between. I have spent whole semesters rolling in your words, reveling in the light and life they bestowed upon me, quoting them to anything and anyone who would stop long enough to hear me. You have inspired essays, infused journals, and insinuated yourself into every nook and cranny of my life.

And I am thankful.

I am so, so thankful.

Last year I read you alone in a giant house with only a stranger’s dog for company, read you with tears on my cheeks and a lump swelling in my throat. Last year I read you aloud, breaking the silence of the room like I broke my own heart every time I tried to picture my future and failed. Last year I read you, and wondered if you would be the last I ever read.

This year, I read you on the balcony outside my apartment while the breeze teased my hair and my roommate’s cat nosed my heels. This year, I took my time with you, not caring when my attention strayed, because this year, I knew I’d read you again—next year, and the next year, and all the years after that.

And maybe one of those years, I’ll finally figure out how to explain what you’ve done for me. But for now, this will suffice.